Old Man Logan
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Before Wolverine, there was Old Man Logan. Black Tom was a fearsome man, a bitter drunkard full of wild tales and world-weary hate. Elizabeth Howlett should have feared him. She didn’t. He had two sons. Her son, who forgot all, could never forget Pa.
1. Man and Wife

**OLD MAN LOGAN**

Disclaimer: I neither own nor profit from any of these characters, they are all the property of Marvel and the Mouse.

**Chapter One: Man and Wife**

**British Columbia, Canada, 1880's**

John Howlett was as good a man, as fine a gentleman and as good a husband as any man could ever be.

He was a good-looking man, tall, and well-made, with fine, soft reddish-brown hair and amber eyes that had great wisdom and kindness in them.

John was the personification of the benevolent country squire; he used his wealth and his position to help those less fortunate. While lesser men whiled away their time and their money of gambling, social functions, and the tedious routine of the monied classes John took his position as Squire Howlett very seriously; there was not a villager in the town nearest his estate who had not benefited from his generosity and did not praise his name.

In stark contrast, the groundkeeper of his estate, Thomas "Black Tom" Logan was a drunkard and a ruffian, who told wild tales of a misspent life as a tramp, a soldier and a convict. When he was deep in his cups, he claimed that he was over a hundred years old, and spoke of Paris during the revolution when the heads of the wealthy rolled, and of his bloody escapes from heathen military prisons in the far flung corners of the empire. His tales of his life and times were lurid. Terrible stories of blood and violence, glory and debauchery, squalour and poverty.

Old Black Tom lived alone in his cabin with his bitterness and his whiskey, and was glad of it.

There was a wildness about his looks, a roughness that was made ugly by his black disposition. He was a short, hairy, stocky man with a barrel chest, and a head of bushy black hair that crowned his perennially angry face, in which were set two blue eyes reminiscent of those of a rabid wolf.

He was a frightening man, and Elizabeth was frightened of him.

The doctors told her that she had to spend more time outdoors, that it would hasten the end of the long illness she had suffered after the stillbirth of her first child. She enjoyed the outdoors and her husband's estate, but fear of Black Tom sent her rushing for the safety of the manor house.

The sight of him did something to her, something terrible, and unpleasant.

Even the sound of his heavy footfalls, accompanied by his foul muttered curses in his guttural Irish brogue was enough to se her heart to racing with fear, and send her running.

John found her fear of the groundskeeper somewhat amusing.

"Black Tom? He's no danger to anyone but himself. They call him "Black" because of his dark looks, because he's Black Irish and he has black moods, not because he's some kind of monster. He used to be a soldier, he joined the army as a young man to escape famine and poverty in Ireland. I believe the poor fellow saw a lot of action in his thirty years of service, and a lot of it awful. He was held prisoner a few times, in some far-flung regions of the Empire, under horrifying conditions. He claims to have been transported to Australia as a convict, he must have been terribly young at the time. But, then again he claims to have been born in 1760, as well."

"Can he really be that old, John? His stories are so convincing."

John Howlett laughed.

"You fear him so, but you listen to his drunken ravings?"

"No. But I hear them repeated, by the other servants."

"From the look of him, I'd say the man was no older than thirty-five or forty, but I imagine he's in his fifties, I've seen his medal for thirty years military service. He gets a small pension from the Crown, for his service, and uses it to buy himself books, which his cabin is stacked with from floor to ceiling in one corner, and whiskey in cheap taverns where he can find the sort of women who are beguiled by the tales he spins from the experiences of his life and the books he devours. The man's just a broken-down ex-soldier and a bitter old drunk. He's not an ogre, my dear. He's a pathetic character, really, but as long as he does his job well, I have no quarrel with him. And you should have no fear of him."

But Elizabeth did have fear of Black Tom, terrible fear, a fear that sometimes kept her awake at night.

She would get up from her bed, where John slept, and go stand by the window and look out over the grounds.

From her high bedroom window, she could see the groundskeeper's cabin, the light in the window burning all night.

Sometimes she saw the groundskeeper himself, standing by the tallest tree closest to the house, looking up at her window, as if he was waiting for her to come and stand in it.

That was when she feared him most of all.

***

It was a lovely day, not long after her conversation with John, just as winter was beginning to turn to springtime, one of the first warm days of the New Year, a day Elizabeth was enjoying with a good book when she heard that familiar heavy footfall, and that terrible train of horrible oaths.

Her blood froze, the very marrow in her bones was chilled to zero, and for a moment she was paralysed with fear.

She saw him in her mind's eye, standing under the tree, looking up at her window with his wolfish eyes, and then she dropped the book, lifted her skirts and began to run helter-skelter, the way a terrified small child runs.

Except this time she was running headlong in the direction the groundskeeper was coming from, instead of away from him, and, crashing through a hedge, she ran right into him.

He smelled of the earth, and of tobacco and cheap whiskey, and the fabric of his clothing was rough.

She jumped away from him and in her haste, fell to the ground.

"And where would you be goin' in such a hurry, Miz Howlett? Now you've got your dress all dirty, haven't you?"

He tried to help her up and she skittered backwards, and fell into the hedge.

Black Tom's feral face broke into a smile and he laughed.

It was a hearty, booming sound, quite unusually cheerful coming from a dour, bitter man, consumed with such world-weary hate.

Or so he seemed to her.

"You're not afraid of old Black Tom, now are you?" he asked.

He helped her to her feet, whether she wanted him to, or not.

"No, Mr. Logan. I was just…surprised."

"Ye looked it. What were ye runnin' from?"

"Some kind of animal. It chased me."

"Oh. I see."

He was still smiling; he knew she had been running from him and he found it amusing.

He sniffed, and she thought perhaps he was ill, but no, he sniffed for the same reason animals sniff, to catch the scent of something.

"Ye're bleedin' Miz Howlett. And yer dress is all torn. Ye've picked the wrong hedge to fall into." He said.

"Yes, well, I'll just go back to the house and get cleaned up, thank you, Mr. Logan."

"And I'm to let you stumble there on your own, trippin' over yer torn hem and bleedin' all over the ground. And with some frightenin' animal on the loose? I'd best walk with ye."

He took her arm, and Elizabeth walked with the groundskeeper with her heart hammering in her chest and a scream trapped in her throat.

She knew why he stood by the tree and stared up at her bedroom window; a woman knows these things, and they had quite a bit of the wood to walk through.

Her dress was already torn and she was already bloody, and though he was no taller than she was, he was a powerfully built man.

No one would be the wiser.

It would be hopeless to resist him.

"And here's your book."

He bent down to pick it up.

"So, you like Milton, do you? I prefer Byron, myself, but then, I suppose his work's more suited to a soldier than a lady."

"Actually, so do I, Mr. Logan. But I find that, lately, I find Byron…disturbing."

That made the groundskeeper laugh, again.

"And there's nothin' disturbin' about the war between Heaven an' Hell?"

They were out of the wood and coming closer to the house, passing the tall tree.

"I can manage from here, Mr. Logan."

"I reckon ye can, at that. I'll see you in your window, Miz Howlett. If it's convenient, ye might wear the lavender gown, with the ruffle at the front."

He winked at her.

"Mr. Logan! I'll do nothing of the sort! Do you know what would happen to you if I told my husband about this conversation?"

"Sure I do. But ye won't. Ye look pale, Miz Howlett. I'd best walk ye right to the door."

When they got to the door, Black Tom tipped his hat, sarcastically, if one could do so, and chuckling to himself, walked past her, and on his way.

***

That night, Elizabeth put on the lavender gown, and after John had fallen asleep, she got a candle and went to the window.

She was afraid not to, afraid of what he might do.

When she parted the curtains she saw him there, under the tree, holding a lamp against the black, moonless night.

Elizabeth closed the curtains and ran back to bed.

She buried herself under the covers, trembling in fear.

It was quite a long time before she could get to sleep.

***

The more Elizabeth thought of it, the angrier she became.

What right had he, a drunken Irish convict, a common soldier, to laugh at her, to make sport of her, let alone to make impertinent advances to her, to insist she appear in her window dressed in certain nightclothes, as if she was one of his women, some slattern he enticed back to his cabin from a disreputable tavern?

She was the lady of the house, after all.

He was some ragged ruffian who would likely have died from drink, or hanging, or would have ended up a common tramp if it wasn't for John's generosity.

That was how he started life, a street urchin and a common tramp of an Irishman, and that was how he deserved to end it.

Imagine him, laughing at her!

John had probably discovered him lying drunk in a doorway or an alley, and he gave the man a job, and a home, and this was how Logan repaid him? By making improper advances to his wife?

The man was little more than the wild animals he was charged to control.

Her anger at being so treated by the bandy-legged, insolent groundskeeper quite overwhelmed her usual fear of him.

She refused to be treated as the object of his crass fantasies.

On the occasion of her walks, Elizabeth no longer avoided the groundskeeper, indeed, she made several trips to his cabin to confront him, over the period of the next two weeks or so.

She stomped around his rough-hewn little porch and banged on his equally rough-hewn door, demanding he answer.

But Logan was either out and about on the estate or worse, inside, laughing at her fury and her indignation.

At long last, she raised such a fuss that he could not ignore her, and after many days and fruitless trips had passed, he answered his door to her.

Elizabeth angrily pushed past him into his rough-hewn little one-room cabin.

"Now you see here, Logan, I am the mistress of this house and you are employed her at my husband's pleasure. I'm sure he would not be pleased to know you've been making sport of me—"

"Am I now? And here I thought I was the groundskeeper, an tis you who are employed here at your husband's pleasure, madam." The groundskeeper joked.

"Those are precisely the kind of impertinent and improper suggestions that I will no longer countenance. I refuse to live in fear of you, sir. I do not find you or your tall tales charming, or interesting, not do I find you the least bit attractive. You will stop coming to stare at me in my nightclothes, and you will cease making these tawdry and unappreciated advances to me, or else I will tell my husband about you, and then you will be sorry!"

Elizabeth was well aware that she was shouting at the man, and it wasn't like her to shout, but she was terribly angry, as terribly angry as she had once been terribly afraid.

"Oh I will be, will I? D'ye fancy, then, that a man like me, who's lived a hundred and twenty some years in and on and around about every continent on this world would find himself upset to be losin' such a sorry situation as this one? Or is it your bastard Mr. Howlett I'm to fear your rich, bloodless English son-of-a-bitch of a husband? What's he going to do to me? Give me a good talking to? If he was even half a man his wife wouldn't be standing at her window all night; she'd be sleepin' in his bed with a smile on her face."

The very idea that he would make such an impertinent suggestion infuriated Elizabeth even further.

"I will ignore that crass statement, sir, because I am a lady, and I imagine that the kind of women you are accustomed to dealing with are not."

"True. But I know when a woman's interested in actin' like a lady and when she's not, and I don't think you came here to show me how proper ye are." He replied.

"Are you making advances towards me?"

"Me? I'm not the one who comes and stands at her window in her small clothes, so that when the moon hits her right anyone below can see right through 'em. I'm not the one who's come to your door, howlin' and poundin' it down. I been tryin' to be a gentleman and treat you like a lady. But, there's only so much a man can take, and then, he has to be a man, after all."

Black Tom could move quickly, quickly as an animal could, and he had his arm around her waist before she could protest.

Elizabeth was pressed against his rough clothes again, smelling earth and tobacco and cheap whiskey, and something else that she supposed was just him.

There wasn't too much whiskey on his breath, which was heavy, and shallow.

Elizabeth's breath was as heavy and shallow as well, and her heart was pounding in her chest.

Heat rose into her face and she blushed, furiously.

"Let me go, Mr. Logan! I don't know what you are about!" she insisted.

"Sure you do, my girl. You're not so old, not even thirty, I daresay, but you're a married woman and ye've just buried a son, poor woman. That's because you got him by that soft John ye've married. His blood's too thin to survive in a wild place like this. Not like mine. You want a son ye can be proud of, a good, strong boy? I may be able to give ye what you're looking for."

He tried to kiss her and Elizabeth squirmed away.

"No! I don't want to! Get your hands off me, you beast! You animal!" she cried.

He let her go.

She was surprised that he let her go, and furious that he was laughing at her again.

"Alright. Have it your way, my dear. I've no shortage of women that I've got to resort to force, and I'm old enough to know better than to try. I suppose this job's done, and I'll be leaving here now. But, how about letting an old soldier who's going on his way in the world, once again, have a kiss goodbye? What can that harm?"

"I am not a vindictive woman, Mr. Logan. I do not wish to see you turned out of my household. I will let you have your kiss, and your situation, if you will promise to leave me alone. Do you promise?"

"If that's what you want, Miz Howlett, then you have my word."

He put one arm around her waist and drew her to him, slowly, and with the other he turned her face to meet his, holding her flush against his body so that there was not a bit of space between them.

She didn't know why she was letting him kiss her, and why she did not protest when he dropped his hand from her face to touch her breast as he kissed her, but she was afraid, again, terribly afraid, and then the fear left her.

And Elizabeth was angry again, and the anger left her.

That was when she realised it was not fear or anger she felt for Black Tom Logan; she had never feared him or been angry with him; she had desired him, desired him always.

She lay awake at nights in fear of him only that he would come to her dreams.

She had longed to go to him; he was something wild, beckoning to her from under the trees, and his presence roused something wild in her that she never could have dreamed existed.

If he was like a wolf in the night, then she was no sheep; just a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Black Tom broke the kiss.

"Do you still want me to leave you alone?" he asked her.

"Don't make fun of me, Mr. Logan. You know I don't."

His face softened, just a little.

Almost imperceptibly.

"I'm not making fun of ye. I think about you in that big house, lyin' in your feather bed with soft John, an' it makes me want to burn the place down. I would have left here long ago, if it wasn't for you. What does a man like him know about a woman? Why does he deserve a woman like you?"

"Mr. Logan…Tom…I…I don't know what to say."

"What do you say to him, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth blushed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what do you say to soft John when you come back from your window, and you can't sleep because you're hungry for a man?"

She knew just what he meant; he was talking about, talking about her desires.

Elizabeth barely thought about her desires, she never spoke openly of them to her husband; how could she speak about them to another man?

My God, am I going to take this man for my lover? Here, in this place? On that bed?

Well, why shouldn't I? Haven't I spent enough lonely nights, between cold sheets? Didn't I waste my youth, waiting for the promised fulfilment that never came?

Didn't my child with John die inside me, because I have become old before my time, because I have withered on the vine, because I have been so neglected as a woman that my body has forgotten what it means?

He's a strong man, a virile man; he can make me a woman again, and give me sons.

Give me fulfilment.

And love.

"I say…please."

"You say what, then?"

Elizabeth tried to turn her head from the older man, to hide her tears, but he wouldn't let her.

"I say, please. Please, my darling, I feel so lonely. Please. Because I am so very, very, desperately lonely, Tom! And since my child died, died in my body so that I gave birth to…to a corpse, I have been desolate! I have tried to be a good wife! I have! And John is a good man. A decent man. A good husband. But, he leaves me lonely, and cold, and now I fear, I am old beyond my years. Too old to really know what it is to be woman. To have a child. To love a man. To know…fulfilment."

A black look passed over the Irishman's features, a black look of bloodlust and rage that made Elizabeth know why it was they called him Black Tom.

It passed, quickly, into that softening of his features that made him look handsome and virile and strong.

"I promise you, Elizabeth, ye'll never have to beg me. An' I can give ye all that ye;ll never get from Soft John."

***

About a week before her wedding, Elizabeth's older sister, who was already married, explained to her exactly what it was that a man did to his wife, or to women of loose moral character who didn't care if they were married or not.

Some of it Elizabeth had heard before, but not all, and it didn't strike her as being disgusting, just a little curious, was all.

Her sister told her that, at first, it was unpleasant, and that one was embarrassed to be in one's underthings, or to be naked, and moreso to see a man in such a state. The act itself was terribly unpleasant the first few times, no matter how careful your husband was, but, after that, when one got used to it, one found that it was a pleasing experience, sometimes, actually quite delightful.

There was a certain knack to it; it was the sort of thing you figured out as you went along, with your husband's help, and his patience, and then you began to see what all the fuss was over.

The idea, then, was to be brave through the initial unpleasantness, knowing that a certain kind of happiness and fulfilment that could only be had from a husband awaited you.

In her marriage, Elizabeth found neither.

Her initial experiences with John were not that unpleasant, but the act never became a pleasing or delightful experience, either, and since the death of their son, more and more infrequent.

She was amazed then, by the feelings aroused in her by the groundskeeper.

He closed his shutters and fastened them, and bolted his door, and quite without shame he took off his clothes, every stitch.

Elizabeth had never seen a completely naked man before, except in paintings, and Tom was almost fearsome in his nakedness.

He was quite hairy, on his arms and his chest and his legs, even on his shoulders and in the middle of his back, and indeed, powerfully built and muscular.

She found herself staring at him, looking him over from top to toe, even glancing at his manhood, and when he caught her looking, Black Tom wagged it at her, and laughed.

"Bet you never saw anything like this, before, eh, my girl?" he leered.

Elizabeth had already taken off her dress, but she was still wearing her chemise, her corset and her drawers, which was as undressed as she ever got with John.

"Shall I take my clothes off as well?"

"No. I'll do it."

He held his powerful, hairy forearm in front of him and made a fist of one of his huge hands, and before Elizabeth's wondering eyes, three long, sharp, bony claws about a foot long and as thick around as one of his fingers tore out of his hand, from between each inside knuckle.

"Oh my God!" she gasped.

"I figured you ought to see 'em sooner than later. I'm not gonna hurt you, but that's more than I can say for your clothes." Tom chuckled.

Elizabeth tried not to be afraid as Tom approached her, but there was something exciting about the heaviness of his breathing and the growl that rumbled through his chest as he cut the laces of her corset and she burst out of it.

It fell around her feet.

He made the claws retract back into his arm, and before her wondering eyes, the cuts they had made in his hands healed.

She lifted up her arms and Tom pulled her chemise over her head.

They were part of him, he had control over them, and feeling his strong, warm hands untying the waist of her drawers, Elizabeth couldn't be bothered about the claws.

We are all God's children, after all.

When she was naked, instinctively, Elizabeth tried to cover herself with her arms, and dart towards the bed, but Tom wouldn't let her.

He kissed her again, the way he had before, and the sight of his body, the touch of his hands, his fingertips, his lips, they inflamed her with what she supposed was sexual passion; she had never felt it before.

She found herself in his bed, naked as a needle, both of them, naked as a needle and, the strong feelings of passion, pleasure, and delight that swept through Elizabeth crowded shame from her mind.

She embraced Black Tom with a sort of wonder, feeling weak and strong all at the same time.

He kissed her and touched her all over her body, even in shameful places she suddenly felt no shame in, and she held him fast against her, unable to stop the moans and cries from escaping her lips.

Then, suddenly, Elizabeth was tormented by something that was like an ache in her womb, but not really.

"Tom, oh Tom, I…I need you." She gasped.

She could no longer stop herself from touching him, she kissed his chest and ran her hands all over his body, and finally, gingerly, haltingly, she grasped his manhood, and the way he made a sound like a moan and a growl made that strange ache worse.

Elizabeth felt giddy and molten as she led him to the quick of her with an unsteady hand.

"Are you ready for me, my girl?" he growled close to her ear.

"Yes…oh, yes…" Elizabeth gasped

He said something shockingly base in her ear, crude but yet tender, and she felt their joining with an outburst of delight unlike anything she had experienced before, a pleasure that only grew, and mounted as he moved inside her, seeking her lips to kiss her, which she gave him, gladly, opened herself for him, gladly, embraced him in all her trembling limbs.

She wanted more, more of him but she didn't know how to tell him so, squirming beneath him, then, somehow Tom knew, quickening his pace, and the force and depth of each stroke.

The feeling swelled in her, sweeping over her whole body until she felt as though she would burst.

The sweat from his brow and his wild hair dripped onto her forehead; Elizabeth cried out, louder and louder, moaning and keening against Tom's grunts and growls and groans.

He kissed her, fiercely, sweeping his tongue around her mouth; he had not done that before, and she could taste herself on his lips.

And, in a curious way, then, she did burst, a culminating burst of delight that made her understand what it was her sister had spoken about, tightening her limbs around her lover with mad, reckless abandon.

Tom swore, terribly, and abruptly withdrew from her; she could feel his manhood jerk against her breastbone.

He had spent on her rather than in her, which she supposed was rather gentlemanly of him, and the doze she began to slip into was interrupted by something cold and wet and rough on her breasts, and opened her eyes to find Tom wiping her off with a wet cloth, which he then used to wipe off his manhood.

He tossed the cloth into a bucket in the corner and fell into the bed beside her.

"See? I even tidied you up a bit. I am a gentleman, you see."

Elizabeth laughed and she reached for him, glad that he was willing to hold her in his arms.

"So, that's what all the fuss is about." She said.

"Fuss? What fuss?"

"I never had any feelings like that with John."

She looked over at the groundskeeper and he laughed his great laugh and smiled.

"Well then, I have taken your maidenhead, in a way, haven't I? That makes me your husband. Not soft John."

"Yes. And I shall be faithful to you, Tom. I will never say "please" to John, again. I don't think he will miss it, if I don't say "please" to him. Will you be faithful to me?"

He got a very queer expression on his face, Old Black Tom, and held her so tightly in his arms that it almost hurt.

"Till death do us part, Elizabeth. Ye have my word on it, may the Devil take me now instead of later if I'm lying."

Elizabeth closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

She had taken a long and strange path to love, and found it at last.

Longer and far stranger, however, was Old Black Tom's.


	2. Jimmy Lad

**Chapter Two: Jimmy Lad**

**British Columbia, Canada, 1890's**

"Stop your wiggling, Master Howlett! You've never stood still a minute in your life, have you? Now, please, when you go out today, try not to tear your jacket. Or your shirt. Or lose them. And stay out of the brush. You know how it affects you, with your hay fever and your weak chest. And if you have to sneeze or cough, use your handkerchief, not your sleeve. Now, there you are, you look like a young gentleman."

James Howlett, age 9, looked at himself and his governess in the mirror and scowled.

"I look like a bastard fairy." He said.

"No cussing! Where did you learn a word like that? From that Black Tom you're so enamoured of, I'll be bound! I don't know what it is about you and that man, Jimmy! You follow him around like a little dog, and he's always barking at you and cuffing you like you are a little dog and he's the big dog. The Big Bad Wolf, I daresay. Now, you stay away from that groundskeeper. I know you didn't learn words like that from your father."

"Father says I can go see Black Tom."

"Your father is far too liberal. With you, and your mother."

Jimmy expected that had something to do with his family situation.

He understood, from his mother, that Father was his father by name, and in his thought, word and deed, but not by blood.

That was the groundskeeper.

"Black Tom loves you, in his way, Jimmy. He's your Pa, but he's had a very long, hard life. The world has not been kind to him, and he hasn't the patience for a wife, or for small boys." His mother said.

That was true enough.

Old Black Tom was a mean, mean man, and half the time Jimmy ventured to his cabin he got chased away, with a cuff or a knock with one of the stones Black Tom threw at the "bastard rabbits" who were always trying to plunder his vegetable patch.

But, Jimmy didn't let the occasional smack or a few cross words deter him.

If he didn't come looking for Pa, Pa came looking for him.

He wasn't a bad man, just a gruff man. That was Pa's way, it was why Jimmy and his mother lived in the big house with Father.

That was what Mother said.

It didn't bother Jimmy.

He loved his Father, and his Pa, who was the most fascinating person in the whole wide world.

He was a hundred and thirty-two years old, and told Jimmy he could expect to live just as long, maybe longer, and he had great big claws that he could do just about anything with that he could make come out of and go back into his hands whenever he liked.

Pa said Jimmy had them too, but they weren't fully grown yet.

When he was older, Pa said, he'd show him how to use his claws, the same way he showed him all about the world.

Pa taught him to hunt and to fish, but not like other people learned; he showed him how to track animals with his keen senses, how to catch fish with his hands, and kill game with the claws. Pa showed him how to build a house, and fix things, which was boring, but all the things Pa showed him about living in the woods, like finding shelter, or making it, how to sniff out an occupied cave from an unoccupied cave, what plants were good to eat and what they were for, that was all great adventure.

Father told him that he would be Squire Howlett, someday, but Pa told him he'd lived in the woods, for years, sometimes, and that someday Jimmy would have to live there, too.

Father taught him about, duty, and honor, and loyalty and respect, about how it was up to the strong to be brave, and to protect the weak, and see to it justice was done.

Pa said that even weak people banded together to enforce mob justice, that most people weren't worth your honor or loyalty, once they found out what you were they would shun you and betray you. You had to pick your friends carefully, and keep them close, but to watch your enemies, and to keep them closer.

Pa said, in the world, there were only predators and prey, and even if you were a predator, the tables could turn in an instant, and you could find yourself the prey.

Jimmy had decided they were both probably right; but he didn't put a lot of thought into it.

Pa had a lot of books, which Jimmy was allowed to read as long as he didn't take them away from the cabin, and the things he told Jimmy about the world and what happened in it and the things in his books were very different than what Jimmy's tutors taught him, but he believed Pa, because Pa was there, and the books, because they were all written by people who were there, or famous authors, not like his tutor, who had never been anywhere.

Jimmy feared Pa as much as he loved him, but like Pa said, it was blood between them, and only natural that Jimmy should be drawn to him.

He spent the whole day listening to his tutor drone on, itching to get outside, but when his lesson were done he shot out the doors of his father's manor house like a bullet out of a gun.

The first thing he did was to take off his jacket and his tie, put the tie in the pocket and hang the jacket on the fencepost.

Then he took off his socks and his shoes.

He was about to run off, but then he recalled Mrs. Whittington telling him not to tear his shirt, so he took that off, too.

The air made him sneeze and wheeze and cough, so he blew his nose, stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket and, with his book under his arm, ran for the wood.

By the time he got into the thick of it, he was too hot, so he took off his trousers and his drawers and went for a swim.

He couldn't very well put his dry clothes on his wet body, so Jimmy left them under a rock and ventured further, following the enticing smell of wild blackberries, of which he devoured a large quantity, right from the vine.

He sneezed, wiped his face of blackberry juice on one arm and his nose on the other, and flopped down in the grass with his head propped up against a log to read his book.

Later, he went back to where he'd left his clothes and found the rock moved and his pants and drawers in shreds; then he remembered he had a bit of cake in his pocket; the animals must have got to it.

Jimmy was unconcerned.

He had plenty of clothes at home.

The sky began to cloud up, and not wanting to get stuck in the rain, Father said he could get sick if he caught a chill in the rain, he decided to go and see Pa.

***

Old Black Tom was sitting at his table with his jug of moonshine whiskey, about to eat his dinner, watching the rain beat down the windows when he smelled that familiar scent that was like his, but not his, and then there came the pounding on the door.

"Pa! Let me in, Pa! It's cold out here, and the animals took my pants!"

There was Jimmy, naked as the day he was born, and soaking wet, shivering and sneezing and wheezing in the rain.

Tom gave him a light clout upside the head, and hauled him into the house.

"Owww! What was that for?"

"Bein' stupid! Where's your mother?"

He opened a chest, pulled a blanket out of it, wrapped Jimmy in it and started drying him off.

"Don't know."

"What about John?"

"In the village."

"Can't nobody control you but me, Jimmy, lad?"

Jimmy sneezed, again.

"Of course not. They ain't your Pa, are they? Now, get in the bed and wrap the blankets around you. You'll catch your death. I'll put the kettle on."

As Jimmy turned around , Black Tom smacked him again, across the shoulders and then across his behind, with the wooden spoon he was cooking with.

"Owww!"

"Shut your gob, or you'll get another! Be a smart lad! What did I tell you about losin' your clothes an' getting' stuck out in th' rain and th' cold, at your age? Listen to what I tell you an' I won't have to smack you. Go on, get under the covers."

Black Tom swore and banged his pots around.

"Where did your clothes go, Jimmy lad?"

"I don't like 'em. Bastard foppy things."

"They want to dress you up like Soft John. Make a queer out of you. Dressin' a young lad in a suit and a tie, tellin' him not to mess up his clothes. Why don't they just put you in a dress?"

He looked in the chest again, and came up with a heavy flannel shirt.

"Put this on. C'mon, then, wrap yourself in the blanket, come over here and drink your tea."

Black Tom put a little whiskey in it, to take care of that cough.

"Might as well feed you."

"It's too big, Pa!"

"Sure it is! It's mine, isn't it? After you're done eatin; and it stops rainin', we'll go back up to the main house. Now I'll have to buy clothes for you as well, I see."

He went back to the hearth, and lifted the lid on a pot.

Jimmy sniffed the air.

Venison stew.

Nothing like that high-toned stuff they had for dinner at home.

Jimmy devoured everything in his bowl, and looked longingly at the stew-pot on the hearth.

"Well, go on, Jimmy lad, get some more. Don't the sons of bitches feed you?"

"Bastard fancy shit. I like your food better, Pa."

"Of course ye do! You're gettin' too old to live up there with that lot, Jimmy. Soon they'll see you ain't what they are, and that ye'll never be what they want. Your old Pa knows. Remember, it's blood between us, boy. And bad blood, too. Up there in their bleedin' mansion, Soft John and the rest o' them sonsabitches can try to make you weak and soft like they are, but you never will be, because you're my son, and you'll be what I am. Blood rules out, in the end." Black Tom muttered, darkly.

"What does that mean, Pa?"

"You won't know until you're older. Eat your stew, lad."

After the rain stopped, Black Tom sent his son home.

Jimmy left the door open on his way out and leapt off the porch and fell and rolled awhile, but then he was on his feet again, running pell-mell down the hill, wheezing and wiping his nose.

As Black Tom stood in the doorway and watched him run to the mansion, a black look came over his face.

He was nine, now, and his blood was starting to show through.

By the time he was a lad 13 or 14 and started getting the smell of women in his nose, and his old fellow started to working and he popped his claws the first time, Soft John and the rest wouldn't be able to do a thing with him.

They wouldn't want to, either.

In another year or two, then, when Jimmy was older and stronger and done with his sicknesses and fevers, Tom decided he would take Elizabeth and Jimmy and go away with them, build them a place up in the mountains.

And if soft John didn't like it…

_SNIKT!_

…then he was going to have to go, first.


	3. A Death In The Family

**Chapter 3: A Death in the Family**

**Howlett Estate, British Columbia, 1890's**

At the dinner table, once more, Jim Howlett was conspicuous by his absence.

"I'm sorry, John, I just…well you know how he loves the outdoors."

"That's quite alright, Beth. It wasn't so long ago that I was a boy, 13 years old. I would much rather have spent my time out there than in here. Especially if we had someone as fascinating as Black Tom about."

Elizabeth Howlett looked into her plate.

"John…"

"Not at the table, my dear. Besides, there's nothing to say."

The dining room doors burst open, and Jimmy streaked through them, and took his place at the table.

"Sorry I'm late, Father. I didn't miss dinner, did I?"

"Of course not, Jim. What did Black Tom teach you about, today?"

"He showed me how to make a shelter out of branches and things, if you were in the woods and stranded."

"Well, living in these parts, that might come in handy. Don't you think so, Beth?"

Elizabeth smiled at her husband.

He was, truly, a good man.

"Yes, John, it may."

More and more often, when Elizabeth wanted to see her son, she had to go to his father's cabin.

Jim was a smart boy; his tutors said he was brighter than most boys his age, and he was very well read, probably because he spent so much of his youth closed up inside with books.

He was still a little sickly, but that was all fading, fast.

John hoped to make his only living son into a country squire, but that wasn't the path Jim was taking.

It was as Tom had said, with young manhood upon him, Jim, who was 13, was drawn more and more to Thomas Logan's world than John Howlett's.

He had learned to hunt, and fish, and fight, both with weapons, and with his claws. To build a cabin from the ground up, to make a shelter in the wilderness, what plants and berries and roots were food and what weren't.

You couldn't get the boy in a decent set of clothes, anymore; he wore his father's castoffs. They were the same height, now, and if Jimmy didn't fill out his father's clothes, now, he would, soon.

Jimmy was the image of his father; the older he got, the more he looked like Old Black Tom. He might as well have grown from Thomas Logan's arm, like a bud or a shoot.

He couldn't have looked less like John Howlett.

Maybe John would never say a word, but what about the rest of the household?

The people of the village?

Jim never slept in his bed, in his room, and when John was away from home, he spent every hour that he wasn't at his studies out in the wood. There was nothing at the manor he was interested in except his beloved Father. Otherwise, the boy practically lived in Tom's cabin; Tom had put a bed in a corner for him and hung a curtain around it.

It bothered Elizabeth that when she came to Tom, at night, their son was sleeping in the back of the cabin, separated from them only by a curtain, but it didn't bother Tom, or their boy.

He slept right through.

One night, Tom put words to her fears, words he had said a long time ago.

"Well, Beth, it'll be time for us to leave this place, and ol' Soft John with it, soon. My blood's come out in Jimmy, good and proper, and it's time I took him away. Even if Soft John don't mind him bein' what he is, others will, and that bastard Englishman can't protect him till he's grown. I can. I hate to give up my land, but the boy comes first. There's more land for the askin', further north, up into the mountains. They're openin' a logging camp up there, if I needed the work, but I can live off the land. I'll be needin' to build a bigger place, for the three of us to live in. A proper room for the boy, among other things, and he can help me. I'm afraid it won't be what you're used to, Beth, but it has to be done, and I won't leave without you."

"I go where you and my son go. You know that, Tom. John will have to understand."

"Fine. Then pack what you need and we''ll leave at the next full moon; the light will be good to travel by. I'll tell Jimmy lad."

***

The night they were to depart, Jim Howlett had his things packed, and loaded onto Pa's wagon; he had been helping Pa to pack up, for two weeks.

Pa hitched his two horses to the wagon, and tied the milk cow behind it, and drove the wagon up through the path he had made in the wood.

Then they walked down, past the cabin, and back up to the big house, to get Mother.

"Sad, Jimmy lad?"

"A little. Will I ever see Father, again?"

"Not till you're a man, yourself, Jimmy. Maybe not ever again. I'm sorry, lad. It's my fault. When I knew you was comin, 13 years ago, I shoulda packed up your mother and this wagon and left. But I wasn't sure if I was the kind of man to be a father or a husband. I still ain't, but I've run outa bastard time to find out. C'mon. Let's go to the main house."

When they got to the manor house, Mother was waiting for them, but she hadn't packed a thing, and they were leaving, tonight.

"Mother, aren't you going to pack?"

"I'm…I'm staying here, Jimmy. Please try to understand. I love you, and your father, you are my life, but I can't live the way the two of you can. I'd never last one winter."

"If you won't come easy, Beth, goddamn you, woman, I'll take you."

"Logan, you'll do nothing of the kind!"

It was Father, and he looked furious.

He had a shotgun over his arm, and he only moved it long enough to take took hold of Jim and Elizabeth, and pull them away from Black Tom.

"You'll not take my son, or my wife! You're no man to be this boy's father, even if you sired him, and certainly no man to be Elizabeth's husband!" John Howlett protested.

"Well, I see ye've found some hardness in you, Soft John. Come on, boy, come to your Pa. Get your mother."

Jim didn't know what to do.

He couldn't choose between Father and Pa, and he was scared.

Black Tom could smell fear, his son's, and his woman's, and he unsheathed his claws.

"Let me family go, ya English bastard!" he snapped.

It all happened very quickly.

Father raised the gun, and fired at Pa.

The wound didn't seem to faze him, much, and he continued his lunge towards father.

Father prepared to fire again.

"No, Tom! Don't! John, stop!" Mother cried, throwing herself between them.

But the bullets and the claws were already there.

Elizabeth Howlett fell at the feet of her men.

Snarling, Black Tom grabbed the shotgun from John Howlett's horrified hands, and fired a third time.

The Squire was dead before he fell to the ground.

Jim had smelled death, before.

He looked to the left of him, and saw Father dead, and looked to the right of him, and saw Mother dead.

Mother was dead.

Father was dead.

Pa had collapsed to the ground; he was dying.

Tears filled his eyes, and he knelt down beside his last living parent, whining like a puppy.

"Pa? Don't die, Pa. I'll be alone."

"It was an accident, Jimmy. That's all. Bastard accident. Nobody meant to kill anybody, did they? Old Soft John, he had to pick this moment to harden. Still, I can't blame him. I would have done the same thing. Run, lad. Old Black Tom will take the blame for this. Run, Jimmy! Go back to the cabin, and stay there. It was my land, Jimmy. Now it's yours. If you get sick, or you need help, hide with them Injuns I introduced you to. Keep my land, Jimmy. I'll be back for it, someday."

"But Pa, you're dying. And Mother and Father are dead!"

"What? This? No, Jimmy lad, I'll not die. The only thing that can kill your old Pa is if somebody cut my head off and threw it too far away for me to be able to pick it up and stick it back on. And I'll not leave you alone. I'll slip away from here, an' go to your brother. He'll look after you, the way I woulda done meself. An you'll be seein' your Pa, again, one day. If ye can forgive me. I swear, Jimmy. I never meant to kill your mother. Neither did Soft John. She jumped between us, at the last minute. Hell, I didn't even mean to kill Soft John. I swear on my soul! Go now! Run, Jimmy lad, run! Back to the cabin!"

***

Jimmy stayed in the cabin, and watched.

Over a week's time, the local constable came, and then his grandfather, and then an undertaker.

He went and hid in a tree above the manor, to listen.

"All three of them dead. And for what? A silly domestic quarrel. That damned drunk, Logan. He started it, I'll be bound." His grandfather said.

"Wasn't there a son?" the constable asked,

"Yes, John Howlett, Jr. He's been dead for years."

"I mean the other son."

"He's no kin to me!"

"I know that, Squire Howlett."

"Well, John was kind to him, but I would have died before I saw the son of a drunken Mick inherit my family's property."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No. And nor do I care. That drunk had left his own boy, on what woman he got the child I don't know, in that cabin to starve. Let the whelp have the wreck, if he can keep himself in it. "

Jim didn't want to know the rest; he fled back to the cabin, a plan already percolating in his mind.

But, the local constable never came up to see him.

Another week passed, and he had a visit from his grandfather.

He was afraid to open the door, Poppa had been so mean, and talked about him unusually cruelly.

"Open the door, Jim. Please, it's your Poppa. I saw you in the tree, you monkey. Give me a chance to explain."

Poppa had brought him supplies, and money, so he must not have been angry.

"The constable wanted to arrest you, Jim. He knows that Logan was a…a…peculiar man, and they think you might be, too. God only knows what they would have done to you. Now, listen to me, Jim. As far as anyone knows, the Howlett boy is gone and won't be back. They know there's a boy living in Tom Logan's cabin, but that would be Tom Logan's son, wouldn't it? I'm going away, Jim. Back to England. I'd take you with me, but, I couldn't protect you. Not after people found out what you were. Is anyone coming for you?"

"Pa had another son. He's ten years older than me."

"That's good, Jimmy. Now I've got you stocked up, I'm sure you'll be…alright until he gets here."

Poppa looked like he might cry, and Jimmy felt like he might too, but neither one of them did.

He hugged his Poppa goodbye, and then, he was alone, again.

The following week, more police came

"Open up! Open up in there! It's the police."

"What police?"

"The Mounties, boy! Now, open the door."

Jim opened the door for them.

There were two of them, big burly men with big moustaches, dressed all in red and gold brocade.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked.

"Not that we know of, lad. But, the way we hear it, your father's dead, that manor down there is closed up, and you're all alone in this cabin. And there'll be bad snows coming, soon enough. Not a good place for a skinny lad in the middle of winter." One of them said.

"I won't be alone, long. I've got a brother, down South, in Montana. I wrote him that Pa was killed, and I was alone, and he's on his way to come and live here."

"An American brother, eh? Would you be lyin' to me, then, young master Logan?"

"Jim, sir."

"Would you be lying to me just the same, Jim Logan?"

"No, sir!"

"Well, we'll be back to check on you, just the same."

Jim Logan was glad to see the Mounties go, but, as it turned out, he would soon be wishing that they would be back to check on him, sooner.


	4. He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

**Chapter Four: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother**

**Cripple Creek, Montana**

Victor Creed had to duck as he walked in the doors to the saloon.

The man otherwise known as Sabretooth stood six and a half feet tall without his boots on, weighed in at about two bucks seventy five, and was twenty-three years old.

He was currently making his living riding shotgun for the local stagecoach, but, in the ten years since he left the family homestead near Abilene, Kansas, much of what he'd seen and done in those years had gone from bad to worse.

His mother, Victoria, had been a tall, blonde woman with the grace of a lioness.

Like him, she was a feral mutant, with claws and long incisors, but she filed both every day, and tried to hide her mutation.

The only father Victor knew was the man his mother married when he was two, a dour, strict, and stultifying holy Midwestern farmer named Zebediah Creed.

Victoria made it clear to her son that Zebediah, who proved to be a tyrant that beat his wife and her son, was not his father.

His father was another feral mutant, a Canadian, who lived near a town called Howlett, in British Columbia. Victoria herself was an Englishwoman, she had been born in Kidderminster, a small town in the West Midlands, in 1800.

Victoria had emigrated to Canada in about 1850, and some time later, became the school mistress in the village of Howlett, British Columbia.

She met fellow feral Thomas Logan, otherwise known as Old Black Tom at the local public house.

He was one of few other feral mutants she had ever known, and the only person she ever met who was older than she was.

Victoria liked to blame instinct for getting involved with a crazy drunken Irishman like Black Tom, but she always made it clear to her son that she had genuinely liked the man.

They had been involved for a few years, ten or so, long enough for her to learn that he was no man to be a father to a child, even though he wasn't a bad man.

Pregnancy came as a surprise to Victoria; she had never expected she'd have a child at all, and the last thing she wanted was for her son to grow up the bastard son of the town drunk and the spinster schoolteacher, with everyone laughing at him behind his hand.

Zebediah Creed seemed like a better choice, and Victoria took a chance on him, moving herself and her little boy, Victor, thousands of miles to a new country for marriage with a man that had, in his correspondence, made himself seem like a kind, stable, sober, upstanding gentleman.

She always told Victor that during their year-long courtship, Zebediah never gave her a reason to believe otherwise; it was only after they married that his true colors as a stern, tyrannical despot showed through.

Victor never reproached her for it; he loved his mother. He understood that life for people like them was hard, and that they were lucky to have anything.

He was diligent with his lessons, he filed his teeth and claws like a good boy; he did his chores on the farm and minded his mother and Zebediah.

That all ended when Zebediah ended Victoria's life.

Some men kill in a fit of drunkenness, or rage, but Zebediah, who used religion like some men used whiskey, worked himself into an frenzy of rage and righteous indignation, and decided to try to remove the stain of mutation from his stepson, figuring the boy was only 13, if he cut the uncleanliness out of him while he was still young, that just might save him.

He chained Victor in the root cellar, and removed his canine teeth and all of his fingernails with a pair of pliers.

Victoria finally had enough, but with filed fangs and claws, and after a lifetime of suppressing what she was, she was no match for Zebediah, who fought her attack off with what was handy, an axe from the wall, and finished by cutting off her head.

Victor was sure that would be the end of him, but Zebediah just did some preaching at him, and told him he had sent his mother to God, and that at least Victor was now free of the unclean thing he had got from her.

He set the boy free, and told him to go to his room, and go to bed.

Victor did no such thing, he fled.

He let his teeth and his claws grow for a while, returned to the farm and killed Zebediah as viciously as the man had tortured him and his mother, all those years.

After Zebediah's death, Victor took what he wanted from the farm, got on his horse and journeyed all the way from Kansas to Canada, to meet his father.

Old Black Tom was much like his mother had described him. He was a very old man, a very bitter man, a crazy drUnk with a bad temper and a lot of crazy stories to tell, but he wasn't a bad man.

He would have been quite a bad father, though, Victor could see that. Any son of his would have spent many nights alone and hungry wondering when his father was coming home from the pub.

Victor discovered he had a little brother named Jimmy, who looked like a littler version of Old Black Tom. Black Tom was proud of his look-alike son, and he spent a lot of time with Jimmy, but it was Sqiure Howlett and Jimmy's mother, the Squire's wife, who were doing the actual raising.

Victor tried to stay in Howlett, living in his father's cabin, but there was too much wildness in him.

Old Black Tom explained to him that there was something in people like them, that drove them, as he put it "away from the world of men and men's things" especially after something horrible had happened.

He suggested to his son that, for the sake of his sanity, he should go up into the mountains.

Victor took his father's advice and lived like an animal for a long time. One morning, he woke up in a cave, naked, surrounded by animal bones, fuzzy in his head as if he'd slept a long time.

His clothes were gone, so he went to a nearby stream to wash and was shocked to discover he was taller, and older and had grown a bushy beard.

Victor made his way back down to Old Black Tom's cabin, and discovered that three years had passed.

He stayed long enough to get accustomed to "men and men's things" again, and then he went on his way.

Victor drifted back to the States, and travelled around the West, sometimes living by the education his mother gave him, and sometimes by his feral nature and his wits.

It had been seven years since he'd last seen his father, and at first sight Black Tom didn't seem much different, sitting at the bar, but then his son began to smell the grief and the wildness coming up in him.

Black Tom explained what had brought him to Montana.

He was drunk and half-mad with grief, ready to leave Men's world and men's things to lick his wounds and heal, but he put his long journey to wherever he would go aside long enough to pass on a mission to Victor.

"I might be away from this bastard world for a long time, Vic, my lad. Many years. And God only knows on me best day, I'd be a worse father than mine was, except I was never so damn mean. Your brother's just 13, he's lost his mother an' the man who raised him that he called father, an' he ain't strong just yet, he's still skinny and sickly. I was the same when I was his age. He can't hold himself together, let alone my land. Your land and his, it is, too. Your mother was a good woman; she was strong and fierce and like a fookin' rock. I seen the same in you, lad. If you can, get your horse, get your gun, go take care of your brother and look after our land."

"Of course I can, Pa. I promise you, even if you do stay wild like a God-damn bear till the end of your days, I wont let them take our land. And I'll look after Jimmy as long as I live. He's my brother."

Black Tom put his hand on his son's shoulder.

"You've got a black heart, Vic my lad, I can almost smell the blood on you, but you're solid like a fookin' rock. Not like me. But, violence is in your blood. Your mother was no different, when she was young, so she told me. Awww, what do I know? I'm just a drunken old soldier who's lived far too long. But, at least I can go and lick my wounds in peace. I'll be seein' you someday, Victor my lad. Take good care of our Jimmy."

Victor left the saloon not long after Old Black Tom reeled out.

He collected his severance pay, and lucky for the stage owner he paid up, or it would have been some severance to him.

After that, he went to the station, got a train ticket, paid for passage for his horse as freight and began his long journey home.

**Tom Logan's Homestead, British Columbia**

Right after the Mounties left, one hell of a snow came, even for a place accustomed to snows.

Jimmy used up most of Poppa's supplies, stuck in the cabin for a week, and it had stopped snowing but it was horribly cold when he went out to hunt for more.

Jim was in better health than he once had been, but a day or so after he returned from his long hunt in the wilderness, he fell deathly ill, and spent days, feverish and helpless, with nothing to do but hope he wouldn't die.

When the worst part of the sickness passed him, he was weak and pale and thin, and still coughed.

Father always made him stay in bed until he was well but Father didn't know what he was like. Now, Pa always said that he would never get better hiding himself from fresh air and sunshine, so even though it was still cold, spring was coming, and the sun was coming around again.

Besides, lying in bed hadn't worked, and it was maybe a week since he had watered and fed the milk-cow and the horses and the chickens.

The chickens had all died, and Jimmy butchered the ones still fresh enough to eat.

He put the meat in Pa's storage hold, out in the snow.

The horses and the milk-cow had survived, and he made sure to feed them, and milk the cow.

Jimmy cooked a whole chicken that night and ate it, and drank a great deal of milk; he was sure both would do him good.

In the morning, he felt better, so he decided to try to plow out the rows in the garden.

He'd have to plant soon, maybe before Victor came.

The plowhorse was still weak from not being fed for so long, and Pa had told Jimmy it'd be damn hard for him to die, so he hitched himself to Pa's old plow.

It was a small plot, he kept telling himself, working and sweating in the cold sun.

***

Victor rode past the abandoned manor, up to Pa's cabin and found his little brother Jimmy, looking scrawny and pale like he was just this side of death, swimming in Pa's clothes, hitched to a plow that looked like it should have been in a museum, pulling it across hard ground that was still frozen, sweating bullets and grunting with the effort.

"Jimmy! You quit that, right now. You ain't well! Go in the house and lie down."

He stopped plowing, and squinted in the sunlight, openly sniffing the air.

Victor smiled.

Nobody ever taught Jimmy to hide what he was.

"That's you, ain't it, Vic? I'm sick of bein' sick. Pa says…"

"Pa's alright, but he's crazy old drunk, you an' I both know it. That's why he sent me to look after you. So you better mind me, now."

"I'm not so good at mindin'." Jimmy told him.

"Look, Jimmy, you're my brother, and when you were just a little kid runnin' around here, naked, I usedta chase after you and wipe your ass for you an' sit you on my knee. But if I have to show you you'll mind me because I'm bigger an' stronger than you, I fuckin' well will. Why don'tcha just mind me 'cause I'm your brother, and bein' bigger an' stronger and older'n you, and knowin' more of the world than this cabin and those woods, I know what I'm talkin' about?"

"Well, I am pretty tired." Jimmy replied.

"Tired? You look like death, kid. Go back in the house. Take your book, go back to bed. You let me worry about the work around this place. Maybe I'll go up to that Injun village, get that medicine man down here to see you."

Jimmy unburdened himself from the plow.

"I was thinkin' about that, but I never woulda made it."

"I will. It's only a few hours ride. If you fall asleep, I'll be back before you know I been gone."

"How long are you stayin', Vic?" he asked.

"I got no other plans, Jimmy, and nothin' else in this lousy fuckin' world but you an' this piece o' land. An' trust me, it is a lousy fuckin' world. So, it's just you and me now. Alright?"

"Okay, Vic."

***

Jimmy slept for a long time, and he only woke up when Victor woke him.

"Come one Jimmy. Time to eat."

He had fixed them some chicken; he's probably sniffed out where Jimmy put the meat down.

Jimmy was going to go to the table, but Victor brought his food to him in his bed.

He got chicken soup.

"The old Injun, what's his name, Blackfeather, he'll be comin' down in the morning ta see you. I hadda put somethin' he gave me in your soup, and there'll be more tomorrow."

"Tastes kinda funny."

"It's medicine. Eat it all up, anyway."

The next day, Victor went away in the morning, and came back with Fox Blackfeather, the tribe's doctor, and he brought medicine for Jimmy, and told Victor to keep him in bed or around the house for another week or two.

The old Indian, who was about two hundred years older than Black Tom, and looked like a man about sixty who was in good health, smiled down at Jimmy, with canines as pointy as his and Victor's.

"You're a hard little fellow, Jimmy Logan. Tough as your father. Kept your stock alive and your father's land, sick as you were. Like a little wolverine, protecting his den. But you can rest now, and get well. Your brother will take care of you, and I'll be watching over Old Black Tom's boys. If they come for you, they will never come down off this mountain."

It had been a long, hard time for Jimmy, and he was glad to close his eyes and sleep well, knowing that he had done what Pa said, and conducted himself with honour and did his duty, like Father would have expected him to.

***

It took Victor the better part of a month of backbreaking labour to get the place in shape.

Jimmy had done his best, but he was just a boy, and a boy who was sick almost to his death with pneumonia, at that.

Jimmy was well enough to start doing his part in about two weeks, and as spring began to arrive in earnest, the brothers had the work horse well enough to pull the plow, a few chickens in Old Black Tom's coop, the milk cow was fat and healthy, and the vegetable plot was planted.

They were both sitting out on the porch, enjoying one of the first sunny and warm days of the year when some men came on horses.

"I don't like the smell of 'em, Vic."

"Go in the house, Jimmy."

"But Vic!"

"Jimmy, you ain't hardly well yet, you ain't well enough to fight. Go in the house."

Vic could tell the sons of bitches were expecting to find his gutsy but still young, skinny, and sickly brother doing his best to defend the place, not a full grown man in his prime who was a head taller than the tallest of them, defending the place.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" Vic drawled.

"And who might you be, sir?"

"I might be Victor Creed. But where I come from, folks call me Sabretooth. I'm Tom Logan's son, an' I've come a long way to make sure nobody harms my little brother, Jimmy, or tries to take my Pa's land. After you sons of bitches ran my father off his land with a coupla loads of buckshot in his belly for a killin' he done in defence of himself and an' the Howlett woman, an' left my little brother to starve and die all by his lonesome, here, Pa wired me I should come up here to take care of my brother an' protect his land. I hope you're not here to run us off of it. I wouldn't like that."

Victor bared his teeth and flexed his claws, which he extended to their fullest, wickedest length.

"You fellas wouldn't either."

"Now just a minute, Mr. Creed. We came up here to check on your brother. We were just coming to see if you were here. He told us he had a brother coming, but, well you never know." One of the Mounties said.

A second had a question for Sabretooth.

"Now, we didn't come to throw you and your brother off this land, but , Mr. Creed, on what do you and Logan's boy base your claim?"

"Well, there was nothin' here but woods when my Pa built this cabin. He cleared off all this space, built the cabin, and the coop, and the shed for the horses and the cow, even plowed and fenced that little plot for growin. Howlett never came on it; he never laid claim to ownin' it, and my father lived here for twenty years if he lived here a day. In America, that'd mean this was his land. An' I know the law in England is what the law in America came from. Now, seein' as how Jim and me are Pa's only sons, and for all I know, considerin' the condition he was in, you may have just hounded my Pa to his death, that would mean this is our land you're standin' on, now."

Jim Logan made his way out onto the porch, and Victor noticed the lawmen taking a good look at him.

He could see the man's mind working.

The boy didn't look like Squire Howlett, not one bit.

When the boy got older, and Howlett could see the child he gave his name to was the image of his groundskeeper, well, me might have just snapped and shot his faithless wife and his groundskeeper.

And who could blame Old Black Tom for killing the man with what may have been his dying breaths?

The old son of a bitch lived long enough to get down to Howlett to send a wire to his older boy, and staggered back off into the night to die.

At any rate, he was dead, the wife was dead, Black Tom was dead or gone away, and his sons had no part in any of it.

They're like their father was, might as well let them have the place, it's remote enough, and they'll keep to themselves, like their father did.

"Well, if your father ain't dead and he ever comes back, you tell him he better come to Howlett, and execute a deed to this place."

"He'll be back, if he's breathin'. This is his land." Jimmy snarled.

The lawman, and Victor, saw the long, sharp, bony claws emerging from the short, skinny boy's hands, and all the sudden he didn't look so helpless.

"All right, boys. No need to get so upset. We didn't come to dispossess you. As far as I'm concerned, and the law is, Squire Howlett and his groundskeeper had an argument over a private matter that ended in tragedy. He's dead, his wife's dead, no one's come to claim the property, and Black Tom's dead or run off. You boys had nothin' to do with it, an' you got as much a right to live as anybody. This is wild country, my men and I got bigger fish to fry. We'll call the matter closed."

The Mounties took their leave.

Jimmy sheathed his claws, walked across the porch and picked up the bucket.

"I'm gonna go milk the cow. She takes one look at you, Vic, and you scare the milk outa her for a week."

"You got claws like Pa's. Mine are like my Ma's." Victor told him.

"Where's she?" Jimmy asked.

"Dead. Like your Ma. Died when I was about your age, too." Victor told him.

He sniffed the sky, and changed the subject.

"You smell rain, Jimmy?"

"Yeah. Lots of it. Thunder and lightening, too."

"Then we'll go huntin' tomorrow."

After Jimmy milked the cow, the brothers sat on the porch for awhile, and when the storm came, they watched it until the wind began to blow the cold rain all over them, and them they went back into the cabin.


	5. Love

**Chapter Five: Love**

**Blackfoot Village near Tom Logan's Homestead, British Columbia, 1890's **

Two years had passed since the Mounties left the sons of Black Tom Logan alone, on their father's mountain.

In the Blackfoot village which was further down that mountain, Silver Fox awakened early, to disappointment.

She awakened early, every morning, to disappointment.

She was an orphan several times over, both her parents and her grandparents were dead, and she had no brothers or sisters.

Her only living relatives were her aged aunt, and her incredibly aged uncle, the Medicine Chief and now Clan Chief, Fox Blackfeather, with whom she lived.

Silver Fox's great aunt was his fifth wife, and he had been married to only one woman at a time, and had outlived them all.

And Autumn Hawk was beginning to turn grey, and feel aches in her bones in the rain and cold.

That's how old Fox Blackfeather was.

Out of all of his children with Autumn Hawk, none of them had inherited what it was in his blood that made him an extraordinary man, but Silver Fox was the son of the Medicine Chief's eldest brother, the ancient Clan Chief Standing Bear who claimed to have lived 500 years and died right after his only child in 500 years was born.

Standing Bear had not died of natural causes.

He and a grizzly bear had engaged in mortal combat that left them and Standing Bear's young mate dead, dead, but Silver Fox, whom her mother and father had died protecting, survived.

She had been mauled by the bear, but although just a tint baby, she survived and healed, perfectly, without so much as a scar.

Clearly, her blood was akin to that of her father and her uncle.

Some men among the tribe considered her unlucky and wanted to leave her to the elements, to whatever fate would befall her, but Fox would not hear of it, and after he consulted with the gods and the ancients, he made it clear that they would curse the tribe should and harm purposely befall a child of their blood.

Fox Blackfeather's blood.

Silver Fox's blood.

Autumn Hawk and Fox Blackfeather had six children, all of them daughters, the youngest of whom was two years older than Silver Fox.

Her extended family treated her well, but as an orphan who owned nothing but her personal possessions, despite her blood, Silver Fox's status in the tribe wasn't very high.

The chances that she would remain with her uncle and aunt until she was old and grey as they, however, were very high, indeed,

Silver Fox wasn't a very imposing young woman.

The young men were already uneasy with her because of her mutation. Had she been tall and leggy, or even busty and curvy, or unusually beautiful, maybe they would have overcome that feeling.

But Silver Fox was none of these.

She was barely five feet tall, and she was pretty, but very slight.

Just the type to remain an old maid.

And now, she was the only one left with her aunt and uncle.

Her youngest cousin had just been mated, and was off to live in a home of her own, with a man of her own, where everything she touched was hers.

The only boy who ever paid Silver Fox any mind was Old Black Tom's son, Jimmy, adopted into the tribe as Wolverine, just as his father, known to the tribe as Black Wolf, had been.

Jim Logan was only a little taller than Silver Fox, and he had been a shy, scrawny boy when they first took notice of each other two years ago.

But, Jim's shoulders and his chest were beginning to widen and deepen, and black hair was starting to sprout up all over his body; not to mention that his voice was beginning to deepen, as well.

Silver Fox despaired.

Soon, even Jim would abandon her, for one of the busty empty-headed, well dressed maidens who were beginning to notice him.

Well-dressed girls with painted faces and hands un-roughened by hard work who could devote their idle hours to catching a handsome young man, like Jim was turning out to be.

And then, she would be alone.

Living on the charity of her relatives, her aged relatives.

Silver Fox took over the work her cousin had done, and more, whether or not she was asked to.

She did most of the work, and did it uncomplainingly.

Going this morning, a frosty morning in Fall, to wash clothes in the stream.

She was scrubbing them against a large rock when she was shocked from her reverie by the approach of her aunt.

"I can't let you do all this work by yourself."

"But your hands..."

"My hands have been this gnarled since you were a baby. And I will have to do this work when you are mated. Or I can get one of my daughters or granddaughters to help us. You are not an old workhorse. You're a young woman. You should take the time to enjoy your youth."

Autumn Hawk took a cake of soap and a pile of clothes, and got to work.

Silver Fox snorted in disbelief.

"What do I have to enjoy? I will never be mated. No man in this village even looks at me. They fear me, because of my uncle, and because of what I am. Twenty years from now, I will still be with you and Uncle. Gladly, because where would I be without you? Where will I be without you, when you go on to the next world, and, in time, Uncle takes another wife? She won't want me around, some hard-luck old woman, with tainted blood. What will become of me? I will be like old Black Bear, who passes from place to place among virtual strangers because she had no home or family left of her own. What will I do when I'm an old woman, without a man or any children to take care of me when I'm stooped and grey? I'll just be some toothless crone being passed from one distant relation to the next. I don't own anything but my clothes, my blanket, and a few pots, bowls and utensils. I'll be carrying them on my back from place to place until I die under their weight. No, when you are gone, I will not trouble my cousins. Or my Uncle. I will take what I own and walk as far into the mountains as I can go, and follow you into to the next life. I will give myself to my brother the bear, like my father did."

Autumn Hawk laughed, and shook her head.

"And so nobly you'll go to your death, Silver Fox? You won't talk so bravely and casually about death when you are as old as I am. Old enough to know Death, to have had his hand cast over your life. And are you careless enough to forget that there is a man who looks at you? A man who wants to provide you with a home of your own, and children. A man who will certainly be there to take care of you, when you are old and grey. When he is old and grey. Which will happen long after even your Uncle has gone to his rest." Autumn Hawk reminded her, putting her arm around her niece.

"Jim will find another woman. The other girls in the village are beginning to notice him. All of the sudden, they all want Wolverine to come and sit by their fathers' fire. He'll want one of them and I can't blame him."

"True, they want him. Some of them. But Wolverine dose not see any woman but you, Silver Fox."

"But he's not truly of our blood, is he?"

"Wolverine? Son of Black Wolf? Who your Uncle and your father adopted into our tribe because they are of the same blood, the same spirit? Jim and Black Tom, even Victor are as much Blackfoot as you or I. "

"Jim doesn't live our way."

"Wolverine doesn't live anyone's way but his. He will always live his own way, on his own terms, like his brother, and their father before them. That is the nature of spirits like his. And yours. Whichever path you choose, Silver Fox, you will not be like Black Bear. You have many cousins, who regard you as a sister, who have already had many sons and daughters between them. They will not abandon you. And, even if they did, your Uncle, the Medicine Chief, he will outlive us all. Even me. You are his brother's only child, and you share his blood. He would never abandon you. If you stay with the tribe, you will only grow, in wisdom and status. After he dies, you may be Medicine Chief. Or Clan Chief. And lead our people into a future that waits one, two hundred years from now. You may be a woman, but you are the only living heir of Standing Bear and Fox Blackfeather."

Autumn Hawk saw a look of confusion on her niece's face.

She put her arm around Silver Fox, reassuringly.

"You are so young, you don't understand how things may change. You are not lamenting your future. You are lamenting your future without Wolverine. And lamenting your future with him. You are lamenting the end of your childhood. Which is only natural. Everyone no matter how old they are, we are all afraid of change. And unwilling to choose. Unwilling to grow up. But you are on the cusp of womanhood, just as Wolverine is on the cusp of manhood. You must choose. And live with your choice and its' consequences. That is what it means to be a woman."

They worked quietly, for awhile.

"I don't want a future, if it's without Wolverine. But I am afraid. To leave you, and my Uncle, my cousins, my village, and everything I've ever known. And I'm afraid of Victor."

"Leave? Wolverine is of our people. And his father's land is only half a day's journey away, on foot. As for Sabretooth, what do you have to fear from him? He would not harm you, because if he did, he would lose his brother."

"I'm not afraid he'd hurt me. What if, someday, I blossom into the kind of woman men take a second look at, and he decides he wants me for himself?"

"What if he does? Victor's a handsome man. And many more of the maidens whose intentions you fear chase him than chase his brother. I've heard none of them complain that he does anything to them that's strange, or unnatural. Quite the contrary. Besides, Sabretooth would not steal you from Wolverine, or he would lose his brother, as much as if he had harmed you. If Victor wants you, from time to time, let him have you. To keep the peace between the brothers, to keep the peace at Black Tom's hearth. It's no great shame to be the wife of two brothers, among our people. And not as unknown among the good Christian white men as they'd have us think."

Silver Fox looked shocked.

Autumn Hawk just laughed.

"The young. Everything is a surprise to them. A surprise and a tragedy. Silver Fox, if you want your life to be quiet, and to follow in the way a woman of our people's lives have followed, for generations, to live our way, then you will do it without Wolverine. But, if you want to be his mate, you must accept his life, and whatever it might bring you. No one can know what that is. It's your choice."

The two women worked in silence, for awhile.

"What would you do?" Silver Fox asked.

"I would go to the side of the man I loved, and stay there. Even if you were to inherit the mountains themselves, your life without him will be filled with regret. You will be worse off than Black Bear, then." Autumn Hawk answered.

Silver Fox was quiet, and when they were done with the washing, she carried the basket home, in silence.

Later that day, while they were eating their evening meal, she spoke for the first time since morning.

"Uncle, if I wanted to be mated to Wolverine, would you allow it?"

Fox Blackfeather put his bowl and spoon down, thoughtfully.

"I have known Wolverine's father since he came to these mountains, the first white man of my kind I had ever known. He became my brother a hundred years ago, before any man, woman or child living in this village was even born. Days after his son was born, Black Wolf spirited him away from the manor house, and brought Wolverine to me so that I could adopt him into our tribe. Even before Squire Howlett had the chance to bring him before a priest. Of course, I would allow you to become Wolverine's mate. I had not expected you to be mated to any other man. Yes, if Wolverine came to me and asked me for you, I would not refuse him. Why should I? To make it easier for you to decide?"

Silver Fox frowned.

"Nothing will make it easier for me to decide."

Fox chuckled and began to eat again.

"When you are as old as I am, you will look back on this and laugh harder than I'm laughing, now." He said.

"Why don't you wait for Wolverine to make up his mind? Let him choose, first. That will give you time to make up yours." Autumn Hawk suggested.

"That sounds like a good idea." Silver Fox agreed.

* * *

Pa always said that when you were 15, you were a man, and Jim Logan had been a man for almost a year.

A man who didn't have much in the world, not compared to what he would have had as James Howlett, but what he had, he was contented with.

He had his older brother, Vic, and the hope that Pa would come back, someday, and their father's homestead.

His beloved land, on which Vic and Jimmy had made improvements.

They built a small barn, a shed, and a chicken coop, and onto the main house, another section with two rooms and widened the porch, and also dug a cellar.

They extended their front garden patch and it was joined by some land around the homestead they had cleared, where they raised sheep, and pastured four horses, two for riding, two for work, and their old milk cow.

They made their living trading with the Indians, mostly, but also with the shopkeepers in Howlett, mostly during sheep-shearing season.

Victor was a regular at the saloon in Howlett, and Jimmy, now that he was a man, went with him, sometimes, but he preferred the world he knew best.

His mountain, his homestead, the Blackfoot village.

Where he met a girl who had considerably less in the world than he did.

Silver Fox.

After all, he was no longer a scrawny, sickly little boy, with nothing.

He was a man, with land, and a home.

A home without a woman in it, was hardly a home, and a man ought to have a wife, shouldn't he?

The trick was, how do you go about asking a woman to be your wife?

But, Jim reasoned, he was only just a man, and neither Silver Fox or her village were going to pick up and move, anywhere.

He had time.

In the last days of the Fall, before winter sealed he and Victor in so firmly that just to get to the Blackfoot village would be a struggle, Victor went off on one of his mysterious trips that he refused to tell his brother anything about.

There wasn't much for Jim to do after he'd fed the animals, and after he'd spent a few boring days around the homestead, feeding the animals and re-reading Pa's books, Jim decided to go up to the Blackfoot village, to see Foxy.

In the past, nobody but Chief Blackfeather, his wife and Silver Fox and their relations paid him much of any mind, but, as Jimmy began to fill out Pa's castoffs more snugly, and his voice lost that cracking sound, he noticed a big change.

A lot of the girls who had been too good for him, before, wanted him to come and eat at their fires, and some of the young bucks who'd made fun of him for being short, scrawny and white, all the sudden wanted him to go hunting or play war games with them.

Jim didn't mind taking the boys' invitations, at least from the ones who had teased him in good fun rather than malice, but he ignored the girls like they weren't there.

They could swing their hips and paint their faces and parade around in October in nothing but some well-placed buckskin fringe, and he just sailed right past them.

Any girl who had a hunger for a little something different in a man could have that hunger gladly satisfied by Vic when he came home.

Jimmy had eyes for only one woman.

The eligible young women of the village were all down by the creek, in various stages of languor and undress, some of them swimming around bare ass naked in the frigid water, all of them freezing their tits off, and Jim just touched his hat, politely and kept on walking until he came upon Silver Fox and one of her cousins, fully dressed and doing some washing.

"...should be down there with the rest of the girls, Silver Fox. I'm already mated and I've got one in his cradle-board and another on the way." Her cousin was saying.

"Doing what? Practising for a future living over the saloon in Howlett?" Silver Fox replied.

"You ain't gonna end up no whore as long as I live and breathe, Foxy. But some of those girls a little further down the creek don't seem to far off." Jimmy interrupted.

Silver Fox looked like she was about to jump up when he spoke, but then she just looked back at her washing.

"Jim, I understand if you'd rather take up with one of them than stick with me. I'm very plain. I have no figure. And no money. I have nothing to give you."

"Well, I reckon the land I live on has to pass through Pa and Vic before it comes to me. An' I'm short, an' hairy, an' funny-lookin'. I'm he spittin' image of my Pa, and he ain't never gonna win no beauty contests. I ain't got a goddamn thing to my name. Not the pot to piss in nor the window to throw it out of. So I reckon you'n me are about even. Only thing is, I got somethin' heavy in my pocket I been draggin' alla way up the goddamn mountain to give you. Only t'aint proper for me to do so, with alla these folks around."

"Jimmy!"

"Whut?"

"Go. I'll finish the washing." Silver Fox's cousin insisted.

Jimmy helped her up, and they started walking.

"Goddamn, Foxy, it's colder'n a fart in a daid Eskimo, today. Too goddamn cold for fuckin' inna woods. Shit, if'n I was to take out my pecker, it'd freeze n' bust off. Vic's gone off on one of his trips, like, that I ain't permitted to know nothin' about, an it's awful lonely at Pa's with nobody around but the livestock an' the dog. Seein' as how I cain't come up here an' leave 'em all to starve without me, maybe you can come an' stay a spell?"

Silver Fox wanted to say yes, immediately.

"I'd have to ask my Uncle."

"I awreday done that. Your aunt, too. They said there's plenty of folks to help them with the chores for a few days, an' I'm all alone. You need to git anything together?"

"Just my fur robe."

"You ain't gonna need it, darlin'. I'll keep you good'n warm."

* * *

To a city dweller, Howlett would have been like Antarctica and Black Tom's homestead like Hell, but to Silver Fox, the homestead it might as well have been a European spa resort.

Somewhere in France, like.

The main house was large and sturdy, and the brothers had covered the chinks in Black Tom's spilt rail logs with pitch, and then faced the whole building in stones from the river.

The kitchen, where the big stone fireplace was separate from the two bedrooms, and the boys had dug a cellar under the house that you could open a hatch and walk down to.

They had laid down had enough food and supplies for two winters, there.

The barn was constructed of logs and stone, the pastures and the garden fenced in, and they had a well from which you could get all the water you needed for cooking and washing.

Not to mention a bathtub you could fill with heated water from the big main fireplace, so you could bathe in nice, warm water.

And, the greatest luxury of all, Logan had his own bedroom, with walls and a door separating it from Victor's bedroom, with a smaller fireplace inside.

Not to mention a real bed, a brass bed, with store-bought sheets, a thick store-bought mattress on it, piled high with warm, soft, airy home-made quilts that Silver Fox had the decency never to ask if Logan or Victor made them, or both.

There was only so much work to be done all year, and this time of year, there was just cooking, washing, and tending to the chickens, the cow, and the two horses.

They even had a washtub and a washboard, and a clothesline hung out between two poles at the back of the house.

Even a small room with a chair and a table and an oil lamp in it, with all of Black Tom's books and a few new ones to keep them company in bookshelves that Jimmy had made.

Why, there was only four or five hours of work she had to do in a day; the rest of the time was hers and Jimmy's to do what they wanted to.

Seeing as it was that cold rainy, time of year, when the nights brought a blanket or frost thick over everything, they spent quite a bit of their free time in the brass bed.

Where she was curled up in Jimmy's arms, safe as milk, as he was fond of saying.

"You'll spoil me, Jim, bringing me here. I almost don't want to go back to the village to stay."

"Well, you don't have to, darlin'. An if you got tired of it here, we could go anyplace. Anywhere we went, I could find us a warm, dry cave in an hour. I could build us a shelter in less. If I had an axe and a horse and a rope, I could clear off some of trees and build us a cabin in a week. If I borrowed Pa's plow, you could even have a garden. I could make a livin', huntin' an' trappin'. If you didn't like it where we was, we could pick up stakes and move with the tribe, further down the mountain, when the cold comes. In a week, we'd have another cabin, there. An if you wanted to see more f the world, well, Victor's been just about everywhere. Even Europe. I know he's itchin' to get outa here. As soon as Pa comes back to look after the place, shit, we three could go anywhere we wanted. Anywhere we liked. America. England. France, if you wanted. Australia, which is all the way to the other side of the world, if you liked. We got nothin' but time, and nothin' can harm us. Like Vic's always tellin' me, people like us, if we got the balls to grab it, the guts to fight for it, and the brains to keep it, the world is ours."

In her heart, Silver Fox was like Wolverine.

She wanted to be free, to live his kind of a life.

But, in her head, she had reservations.

"Big talk for us. We've never been further off this mountain than Howlett."

"Then we'll start small. Why dontcha stay here, with Vic an' me? You can share my bedroom, and I'm sure Vic won't mind, as long as you do your share of the chores. He's always complainin' about havin' to do his share of what he calls the women's work. He ain't the one who makes the blankets and the clothes, though. Anyhow, I'm gonna live a goddamn long time, darlin'. I'll take care of you when you're old and grey, and my home is your home. Even if I leave this mountain, an' go off someplace else. Maybe we'll go to places wilder'n this. You're home's with me, Silver Fox, wherever I am. I've only been a man for a year, an' I expect I got a lot to learn, but one thing I know is that I love you."

Sliver Fox sat up with a start.

Jimmy found himself thinking she looked beautiful, naked against the moon coming through the window, and the night and the stars.

"Jimmy, you do? You really do?"

"I wouldn't lie to you. Only reason a man has to lie to a woman is to get her to lie with him, and shit, we done that. Many times, you li'le devil. I swear I love you, Silver Fox. If you don't care I'm a mutant, and a short, ugly, hairy one at that, if you'd like to be my woman, it'd make me the happiest ugly little man in the world."

"You are not an ugly little man, Jimmy. And you may grow some more."

"Yeah. Out. Like Pa. But not up."

"Jimmy, I love you, too. And I will always be faithful to you and Vic, and I'll be a good wife, and work hard for you and your brother."

"I know you will. And maybe, someday, you and me, we'll go a little further up the mountain, and I'll stake me out a homestead, and we can have a little place of our own. Where everything in it will be yours."

"Ours, Jimmy."

"That's alright, darlin'. You can have it all. I don't mind."

* * *

It snowed that night, and it was a week before Wolverine came to the village dressed in the elaborate buckskins he had been given at his tribal manhood ceremony, with his horse hitched to a cart containing a cage with two chickens in it, a feather pillow, and two bales of wool.

Gifts for her guardians.

While he met in the Medicine lodge with Silver Fox's Uncle, and her cousin's in law, her Aunt and two of her cousins came, to help her get dressed in her best clothes.

That night, at the evening fire, the Medicine Chief performed the mating ceremony for Wolverine and Silver Fox.

There was a very large banquet, and the young couple received so many gifts that Wolverine's wagon was almost full to bursting.

"But I hardly gave you nothing. I can't accept all this." Wolverine protested to Fox and Autumn Hawk.

"You gave us the most that you could afford. That's what we have given you. If you want to come and live with the tribe, you are both welcome, any time. We will save a space in all our camps for you to build your tepee." Fox told him.

"I imagine I will do that, one day. But, even living where I am, you know I won't be a stranger." Wolverine promised.

He took Silver Fox back down the mountain, that night.

She slept under the cover he mounted, in the back of the wagon, and when she woke up in the morning, it was Jim Logan who awakened her, dressed in Old Black Tom's best suit, which very nearly fit him, now.

He helped her out of the wagon, and Silver Fox found herself in Howlett, the nearest town.

She was excited; she'd only been to own twice before in all her life.

"What are we doing, here, Jimmy?"

"Well, darlin', for it to be legal in the Territory, I've got to marry you here in town, in the office of the Justice of the Peace."

* * *

It was a Thursday, and a sleepy one in Howlett, when the local Sheriff was awakened from a doze by what was obviously a boy in his father's suit that almost fit him, and a Blackfoot girl, dressed in her tribe's finest.

Sherriff Johnston knew the boy; it was Jim Logan, Vic Creed's half-brother.

Black Tom's younger boy.

But, he hardly knew Jimmy, though.

"That is you, ain't it, Jimmy? I hardly knew you, in that old suit. That's the suit Black Tom wore when he came down here 16 years ago, to try and convince me to change your birth record to put his name on it. Damn thing was ancient, then. Can't see you marryin' that pretty li'le gal in that old rag. That is what you're here to do, ain't it?"

The Sheriff liked young Jimmy.

Even though she did come down a peg or two, having her son with Old Black Tom, the boy's mother had been a fine lady, a lady of quality and character, and it showed in her son.

There weren't a lot of men who would trouble to marry a squaw under the law, let alone get dressed up to do it.

"That's why I'm here, But I ain't got the money for a new suit, an' a weddin' where you take our picture. Its' a damn shame. I'd sure like to have our picture took."

"Bill over there at the General Store, he owes your brother ten dollars. You go remind him of that, and pick out a five dollar suit. Gets you a picture and a frame too put it in, too. I'll take care of the lady, for you."

Well, didn't Jim Logan come back in the loudest dude suit five dollars could buy, black and yellow checks with a black vest and a black derby hat.

He was all buttoned into it up to the starched paper collar, looking as pleased and proud as a boy of sixteen could on his wedding day.

Sheriff Johnston married them, and the photographer from the _Howlett Sentinel_ took the picture and signed the marriage licence as a witness.

The picture would be ready in about a week, but Jim Logan took his bride and his marriage licence in his wagon, out of town, back up the mountain.

"Bob, do you suppose Jimmy told his brother what he was doing?" the photographer asked the Sheriff.

"Hell, Al, you know Vic. You'd think that boy was his son, not his brother. Jimmy waited till Vic was gone to pull this caper, too. If Vic knew, he would have been right here, ready to witness that paper wearin' the best suit money can buy. I'll bet when he finds out, Vic's gonna pitch quite a fit." The Sheriff chuckled.

"Yeah. And he'll probably get the whole ten dollars from Bill, to boot."

* * *

Victor was, indeed, furious when he found out what Jimmy had done, and he wasn't ashamed about saying so in front of the squaw.

"You did what? Jesus H. Christ, Jimmy, are you out of your goddamn mind? Two chickens, a feather pillow, and two bales of wool? Shit!"

"Yes, but, my people filled your wagon with gifts. You got the best part of the bargain." Silver Fox interrupted.

"Well, that's something, frail, but I still ended up with you, and I'll bet you ain't worth it." Victor Creed snapped.

"Vic, I would appreciate it if you didn't say things like that about my wife." Jimmy warned

"Your wife! Wife, my ass! She's a goddamn squaw! That redskin shit doesn't hold water in a court."

"Why are you being so mean to me all of the sudden, Vic? You know I work like a mule in my village. Do you think I got married to retire?"

"You stay out of this, Foxy. I don't really mean you any disrespect. It's Jimmy I'm mad at, he's such a damn fool, goin' of an gettin' married to a child like you when he's no bettr'n a boy, himself!"

_**SNIKT!**_

"I had Sheriff Johnston marry us, too. It's about as legal as legal gets, Vic." Jimmy said, through clenched teeth.

"What? You did what? Well, fuck me, Jimmy, I wish you goddamn well would do something with those claws! I wish if you drove 'em right through my head it'd put me out of my misery! Two goddamn years of back-breakin' labor, bustin' my ass to get this piece of shit shack made into somethin' decent, and not only do you bring poor little Foxy, the most half-pint, half-grown squaw in the village around, you marry her under the goddamn law so's she's got a right to our land! Shit!" Victor spat.

Jimmy looked as if he was angry enough to put his claws through his brother, and even if that wouldn't kill the older man, it would make him angry.

Silver Fox had no wish to see Sabretooth, who was close to seven feet tall, with the hair color, musculature, and claws and fangs of a mountain lion, angry.

She made herself look as small and demure as possible, and slipped between them, and put both her hands on Victor's chest, in the most feminine and submissive manner she could muster.

"Victor, you know me better than that! Hell, you make it sound like I intend to do what a rich white woman does when she gets married. Lay on my ass, eat too much, and spread like a cheese. All Indian women know how to work, and we all work hard. I work harder than most. As an orphan, I've had to. I'm well worth your two chickens, and your feather pillow, and your two bales of wool. As for your land, I don't care what your white man's law says. This is Old Black Tom's land, and Jimmy's, and yours. If I ever leave here, without Jimmy, I will do it with my blankets, my pots, and the clothes I'm wearing, today. Jimmy may be my husband, but you are his older brother ,and Black Tom left you in charge. I know that you are the man of the house. I must do what my husband says, but also what you say, and I will do it, because that's the way it is. I won't make any trouble for you, and I'll work hard for you both. I love your brother, and I've got shit to go back to, after all."

Victor Creed looked down at Silver Fox, thoughtfully.

He removed her little hands from his chest.

"You may not be a whole lot of woman, Foxy, but you sure do know how to put what it is you got across, don't you. I think you might be puttin' on the dog a little, too, because I know you got more spirit than that. But I know those Injuns worked you hard, like a damn nigger slave. An' bein' as small as you are, I doubt you'll eat much. Mind, don't you and my little brother get on makin' little mouths to feed right away. Jimmy, I got a whole damn drawer full of those French letters in my bedroom, you take as many as you need. They're a damn sight cheaper than you two god damn children havin' a baby I'd have to raise up, like I raised you up. Still, I reckon we could use another pair of hands around here, an' have a woman to do the woman's work, like the cookin' and the washin'. An' the sewin'. You seen the seams on our shirts? An on those quilts? Shit! Hell, Foxy, I'll even treat you like I would a white frail. Christ only knows us bein' mutants, an' half-Irish to boot, we're about even with niggers, chinks, an' Injuns. But, if you get lazy, woman, or I hear you've been runnin' around on my brother, out you go. An' I'd say that if you was Queen Victoria, herself. You get me, little brother?"

Jimmy retracted his claws.

Coming from Vic, that was approval.

"I understand, Vic."

"What about you, Foxy?"

"I understand, Victor."

"Good. Then we'll all get along. Alright, Jimmy, let's you an' me unload that wagon fulla wedding presents. As for you Foxy, you can dump your gear in Jimmy's room. Then you can git to that laundry, what's in that basket by the door. Washtub's in the barn. Pump's right out front. Clothesline's in the back. Then wash them dishes, an' fix dinner. I wouldn't worry about us unloadin' the wagon, neither. Anything in there intended for you, women's things and such, we won't want."

"Then what?" Silver Fox asked.

"Ain't that enough work? I'm not gonna nigger you like your tribe did. C'mon, Jimmy. We got work to do. The girl knows what work is, an' I hope you didn't forget. It's not gettin' any goddamn earlier, is it? Let's go!"

Silver Fox had once left the tribe, and gone to work at the hotel in Howlett, so she knew her way around a white man's kitchen.

By the time her husband and her brother-in-law had finished unloading the wagon and doing the day's chores, she had the washing hanging on the line, and was putting dinner on the table.

Much of what was in the wagon were kitchen items, and Silver Fox stocked the pantry and made good use of what she had.

Dinner was cornbread, venison, fresh milk, steamed vegetables from the garden with spices, potatoes and squash, and beans with bacon.

Served on a set of baked clay plates and cups, one of her wedding gifts.

For the two men, who ate whatever Victor threw in a pot over the fire, or stuck on a spit, then picked out of the pot with their hands to eat on tin plates, it was like a banquet.

As they came in, Silver Fox was coming out with the seeds from the squash in a hanging basket she hung from the rafters of the porch.

"When those are dried, I'll put them in a seed pouch, and you can plant them in the spring." She said.

In the oven, she had break baking for the following day.

"Try not to stomp around, the bread won't rise."

"It's so damn clean in here. I could eat off this floor." Victor commented.

Silver Fox had to smile.

"Don't you boys ever scrub the floor? Or clean out the hearth? Or the stove? No, I guess not."

After dinner, Silver Fox realised she'd have the whole night with nothing to do.

And Logan's bedroom was a large as her uncle's entire tepee.

"And you and Victor are poor? How do white people live who are rich?"

Jimmy looked sad.

"Someday, I'll have to take you up to the old Howlett manor, and show you." He said.

Silver Fox knew that was where his mother, and her husband, who had given Jimmy his name and accepted him as a son, a man he'd called father, were buried.

She quietly resolved to herself to use some of the idle hours she would have to make a wreath for each of his parents' graves.

* * *

The next five years passed by, quickly, and, despite Autumn Hawk's predictions, in a regular and predictable way.

In Spring, the young lambs were born, and they plowed.

In Summer, they planted, and sheared the sheep, and Silver Fox spun some of the wool into cloth, and dyed it, creating an additional source of income for the brothers.

In Fall, they harvested, and spent much of the season in Howlett, selling their wares and buying supplies for the winter.

In Winter, they all spent much of their time inside the cabin, and the animals inside the barn, but Jimmy and Victor hunted more in those months than most men did.

That was when Sliver Fox made their new clothes for the upcoming year, and fashioned the old ones into quilts, or if they were ragged enough, rags to do the cleaning with.

Like the animals, Jimmy and Victor they could smell their prey, and the cold did not bother them as much as it did ordinary men.

Silver Fox also knew how to tan hides, and she taught Jimmy and Victor; it gave them all something to do when they were shut up against the fury of the mountain's snows.

She made buckskins for all of them, and some to sell, come the spring.

During their first winter, despite Victor's admonitions, Silver Fox became pregnant, but miscarried the child.

In the second winter, she gave birth to a stillborn baby.

She was just too small to carry a child; Jimmy began to take his brother's advice, and practise birth control.

Jimmy did not get any taller, but he became thicker, stronger and more muscular, and coarse black hair sprouted up all over his body.

Silver Fox didn't mind; among white men, she knew hairiness was next to maniless.

As for Silver Fox, by the time the fifth winter came, she had grown so that she was only an inch or two shorter than Jimmy, and her body had finally filled out into womanly curves, with wide hips and a full bosom.

All it meant to her was that she would probably be able to carry a child, now, and her husband was pleased with her womanly body.

She did begin to notice that where no men had ever looked at her, now when they went to the village, or to Howlett, they were all looking, but Silver Fox was not afraid.

She was flattered.

After all, she had Jimmy to protect her; there were few men who weren't more afraid of him than they were attracted to her.

There was, however one man who was attracted to her, powerfully, and not afraid of Jimmy.

Or anyone else, either.

Victor.

_(Author's Note: Uh oh! Victor's figures everything he has is Jimmy's and everything Jimmy has is his, to share and share alike. Does Vic really think that includes his brother's wife? Hmmm. I'll bet this is where the trouble starts...)_


End file.
